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VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY 



LECTURE BY 



SWAMI ABHEDANANDA 



DIVINE COMMUNION 



DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE VEDANTA SOCIETY, 

AT CARNEGIE LYCEUM, NEW YORK, SUNDAY, 

DECEMBER g THt I9OO 



Published by the 


Vedanta 


Society 




NEW 


YORK 






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Price 10 Cents 



The usrary of 
congress, 

Two Copies Received 

NOV. 26 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLAS3 O^xXa No 

COPY 3. 






M He whose heart is unattached to the objects of senses, and whose soul is 
fixed in Divine Communion with Brahman, attaineth to bliss everlasting."— 
Bkagavad Gttd t Ch. V^ %U 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 

Divine communion, according to the Christian be- 
lief, is most intimately related to that ritual which is 
known by various names, the Lord's Supper, the Eu- 
charist, Sacrament or Mass. The general belief is that 
during the celebration of this ritual the souls of those 
who partake in this holy service commune with each 
other as well as with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 
In Matthew we read : " And as they were eating, 
Jesus took bread and blessed it and brake it and gave 
it to the disciples and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 
And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to 
them saying, Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of 
the new testament, which is shed for many for the re- 
mission of sins." Chap, xxvi, 26-28. * 

These words have given foundation to that memo- 
rial service called " Holy Communion," which was in- 
stituted by Jesus the Christ, and which has been prac- 
tised by all the Christian nations for nearly 1900 years; 
but if we read the religious history of other nations we 
find that the eating of bread, or the body of God, and 



2 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

the drinking of wine, or the blood of God, existed 
among pagan peoples many centuries before Christ 
was born, and was practised by the Greeks, Egyptians, 
Persians and the Hindus of the Vedic period. 

Readers of the comparative history of religions 
know that the Eucharist is one of the oldest rites of an- 
tiquity. The Greeks called it the Eleusinian mystery. 
Rev. Robert Taylor said : " The Eleusinian mysteries 
were the most august of all the pagan ceremonies 
celebrated, more especially by the Athenians, every 
fifth year in honor of Ceres, the goddess of corn, who, 
in allegorical language, had given us her flesh to eat 
just as Bacchus, the god of wine, in like sense, had 
given us his blood to drink." 

" Prodicus, a Greek sophist of the fifth century 
B.C., says that the ancients worshipped bread as 
Demeter (Ceres) and wine as Dionysus (Bacchus) ;" 
therefore when they ate the bread and drank the wine, 
after it had been consecrated, they were eating the 
flesh and drinking the blood of their deity. " The 
Eleusinian mysteries were accompanied by many re- 
ligious rites and ceremonies expressive of the purity 
and self-denial of the worshipper, and were therefore 
considered to be an expiation of past sins." Through- 
out the whole ceremony the name of the Lord was 
repeated many times. 

The ancient Egyptians annually celebrated the res- 
urrection of Osiris, their Saviour and Lord, and com- 
memorated his death by eating the bread and wine 
consecrated by the priest through many rites and cere- 
monies. The worshippers who partook of this holy 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 3 

sacrament believed that the bread and wine became 
the veritable flesh and blood of their god Osiris. 

In Persia, many centuries before the birth of Christ, 
the worshippers of Mithra, who, according to the Par- 
sees, was the Mediator, Redeemer and Saviour of the 
world, took the sacrament of bread and wine with 
the same belief that the Christians do to-day. Justin 
Martyr, Tertullian, Renan and other scholars believe 
that the Christian Eucharist was an imitation of the 
Persian ceremony which was practised by the wor- 
shippers of Mithra from most ancient times. In India, 
among the ancient Vedic sacrifices, we find one of 
special importance for remission of sins. It was a 
sacrifice of cake and wine. Cake was called Purodasha 
and wine was called Soma; this cake was made es- 
pecially for this purpose, was round in shape, its top 
resembling the back of a tortoise. It was considered 
to be the symbol of the body of Prajapati, the first- 
born Lord of all creatures, who sacrificed himself be- 
fore creation for the good of all, and out of whose 
body the whole universe arose, The wine of the Soma 
plant is described in the Vedas as the liquor of im- 
mortality, the giver of life and strength, the water of 
life; it was called the nectar which purified the body 
and soul of all those who drank, and which conferred 
immortality upon them. The sacrificer in ancient 
times consecrated this cake, then cut it into pieces, 
and, chanting the name of the Lord, threw each of 
those pieces into the sacrificial fire; at the same time 
he poured consecrated wine into the fire. The remain- 
ing portions of the cake and wine were reverently 



4 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

eaten by the assembled family. The sins of the past 
fortnight were confessed, repentance was expressed, 
forgiveness was asked, and when they drank the divine 
beverage they thought that they were in communion 
with the Heavenly King in spirit — that they were one 
with the Heavenly King and Father of the Universe. 
Every householder used to make this sacrifice at the 
end of each fortnight; husband and wife performed it 
together and ate the cake and drank the wine with the 
rest of the family. The rich and powerful employed 
the ordained priests to perform the sacrifice for them. 
Thus we can see that this hcly communion service 
was performed by the ancient nations for the expiation 
of their sins even centuries before Christ instituted it 
among his disciples; that ritual which is observed to- 
day by millions of Christians all over the world was 
performed long before the time of Christ by many 
nations who had never heard of Him. But the Hindus 
did not continue this practice; they gave it up when 
the Vedic seers began to grasp more abstract truths. 
Their truth-seeking minds could not rest contented 
with the sacrifices and ceremonials which were de- 
scribed in the Vedas; they gradually came to see that 
those sacrifices stood for something greater, and they 
tried to understand the spiritual significance; they 
searched for deeper knowledge of the mysteries of the 
universe; they struggled for the realization of the true 
nature of the soul and its relation to God, who was the 
objective Lord and Father of the universe. At that 
time they began to question whether or not God was 
objective and extra-cosmic; whether or not the soul 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 5 

was created by God. Those seekers after Truth were 
gradually led beyond that old conception of an ob- 
jective, personal God, who dwelt in heaven outside of 
nature. As they progressed higher and higher in 
spiritual researches and arrived at the Vedantic con- 
ception of God and the world, their meaning of the 
Divine communion became higher and more spiritual. 

Here we should remember that as long as God is 
extra-cosmic, outside of nature, as long as He is far 
from us, so long there remains a vast gulf of separation 
between God and man. The more distant God is from 
us, the less chance there is for us to approach Him 
and come into direct communion with Him. Such be- 
ing the conditions, the problem of Divine communion 
does not arise in the minds of the followers of a re- 
ligion which makes God unapproachable, as we find 
to be the case in two of the great religions of the 
world, Judaism and Mahammedanism. These two re- 
ligions believe in an extra-cosmic, objective, personal 
God, who is the all-powerful Creator of the world and 
oi human souls. 

In Judaism the conception of Jehovah is so tran- 
scendent, so objective, so strongly marked and so ma- 
jestic, that there arose a vast sea of separation between 
Jehovah and the individual souls. The communion or 
approach of any individual to Him was considered to 
be almost an insult to the Deity. This difficulty which 
such a conception produced was understood and felt 
for the first time by the Alexandrian Jews, like Philo 
and his followers, who were influenced by the Greek 
philosophy; they tried to bridge over that sea of sep- 



6 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

aration between God and man by accepting the Logos 
theory of the Greek philosophers. 

The Logos is described in the writings of Philo as 
the only begotten son of God, the Father; it was con- 
sidered to be the Mediator or bridge between God and 
the world, between the Creator and His creatures ; the 
same Logos was afterwards identified with Jesus the 
Christ; and since that time the followers of Christ 
have believed that no one could come into close com- 
munion with God except through that especial Logos, 
or Word, or Mediator, or through Jesus the Christ. 
The orthodox Christians think that it is impossible for 
a human being to commune with the Divinity except 
through the only begotten Son, the Christ. They say 
that it is blasphemous even to think of the possibility 
of an individual soul approaching God without com- 
ing through Jesus; they have forgotten, however, that 
the expression of " only begotten Son " was first used 
for the Logos, which was universal, and not for any 
particular personality. 

Do you know why the Christians say that it is im- 
possible for any individual to approach God without 
coming through Christ? Because their conception of 
God is the same objective, majestic, transcendent and 
extra-cosmic being as Jehovah of the Jews, under the 
name of Father in Heaven. As long as this concep- 
tion of the Father in Heaven remains extra-cosmic, so 
long such an idea will continue to prevail. 

In Mahammedanism the conception of God is the 
same as that in Judaism. The Allah is the all-power- 
ful, transcendent and personal God who dwells in 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 7 

heaven, outside of the universe. Like Jehovah, Allah 
is to be feared rather than to be united with or ap- 
proached or communed with. According to Ma- 
hammed, true religion lies in the complete submission 
to Allah's will, and nothing more. There is no possi- 
bility of a beatific communion with Allah in the re- 
ligion of Mahammed. The modern Babists, who are 
but reformed Mahammedans, still maintain a similar 
conception of God; they believe in the same Allah, 
who is extra-cosmic, majestic and outside of the uni- 
verse. The God of Mahammed lived in a heaven, and 
from that celestial abode commanded the universe; 
but the more philosophical class among Mahamme- 
dans went beyond this conception; they were known 
as the Sufis, and were almost like the Christian mys- 
tics of the middle ages. They v/ere the mystics among 
the Mahammedans. They believed in a communion 
with God, and that that communion could be estab- 
lished through love in the state of ecstasy. 

Although these Sufis believed that a human being 
could approach God, yet they did not accept the idea 
that a human soul could be one with Him. They were 
dualists; they believed that the individual soul could 
be god-like and a temporary union between the soul 
and God could be accomplished only through love. 
They did not believe in any other mediator; they even 
rejected Mahammed as the only prophet of God. The 
writings of the Sufis are full of Oriental metaphors 
which seem horrible to many of the practical, matter- 
of-fact Western minds. Even the mind of a great 
philosopher like Emerson could not understand the 



8 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

metaphorical language of the God-intoxicated Sufi 
poet and philosopher, Hafiz. Those who have read 
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam will understand how 
difficult it is to grasp the true meaning which under- 
lies the metaphorical expressions of the Persian Sufis. 

Sufism, which arose about 820 after Christ, was the 
result of the influence of the Vedanta Philosophy of In- 
dia upon the dry Mahammedan conception of the ob- 
jective, personal God or Allah. The peculiarity of 
Vedanta, on the contrary, lies in a conception of God 
which is not only objective, but both subjective and 
objective. He is not merely transcendent but imman- 
ent. God, according to the Vedanta is not only 
outside of nature but dwells in every particle and atom 
in nature; He is not only the soul of the universe, He is 
the soul of our souls. Although Vedanta does not ob- 
ject to the worship of an extra-cosmic, personal God, 
still it does not stop there as other religious systems 
have done. On the contrary, it says that a man may 
fear and worship God as the extra-cosmic being for 
some time, but when his spiritual eye is opened, and 
when he understands the true nature of the soul and 
its true relation to God, he begins to realize that God 
is both objective and subjective. 

The soul, according to Vedanta, is not created by 
God out of any material which is outside of Himself, 
but it emanates from the spiritual essence of Divinity; 
consequently it is of the same substance and the same 
nature as God Himself. It is immaterial, immortal 
and unchangeable. God is not separate from the uni- 
verse; there is no gulf of separation between God who 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 9 

is infinite and all-pervading, and the human soul or 
the world; but He is like the Eternal background of the 
variegated colors and scenes of the panorama of the 
phenomenal world. He is like the spiritual canvas 
upon which are painted the pictures of human souls 
by the invisible hands of the Almighty Artist. He is 
the infinite source of all powers and forces which are 
manifested in the material and physical planes of the 
universe; He dwells within our souls. 

Every individual soul is a part of the spiritual body 
of the God of Vedanta; He is nearer to our souls than 
are our bodies, nearer than our senses, our minds, our 
intellects; He is the essence of our existence and life. 
In Him we live and through Him we exist, conse- 
quently there is no need of any bridge, any mediator, 
between Him and us. The relation of the individual 
soul to God being naturally so close and so intimate, 
the Divine communion in Vedanta has a more spiritual 
meaning and a deeper significance than that of merely 
eating the flesh and drinking the blood of God. God 
has neither flesh nor blood. True communion with 
Divinity, according to Vedanta, does not come 
through any external relation to place, time or per- 
sonality, but it comes to the soul when the innermost 
door of the soul is open to receive that blissful cur- 
rent of the Divine Spirit which rushes in with tremen- 
dous force. It comes when the depths of our hearts 
are flooded with the one sheet of the water of immor- 
tality, and when all the weeds of selfishness, hatred, 
jealousy, sectarianism and bigotry are washed away 
by the tremendous outrush of the current of that all- 



IO VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

loving omniscient Spirit; then rises on the horizon of 
the soul that self-effulgent sun of wisdom; the soft and 
benign rays of that eternal sun dispel the darkness of 
ignorance that had reigned there for ages, and illumine 
the heart with Divine light. 

Divine communion comes at first like the reunion 
of two kindred spirits united by the everlasting bond 
of love, but who are apparently separated by the de- 
lusive power of forgetfulness. As a child who loves 
its mother, and knows nothing but that beloved 
mother, may forget her for the time being when its 
whole soul is fascinated with the toys of Christmas 
time; or as a young woman, charmed by jewels and 
beautiful garments, may forget her lover whom she 
adores, and considers the embodiment of all happi- 
ness; even so, the individual soul, bewitched by the ob- 
jects of sense, may forget the true source of happi- 
ness, which is more intimately related to it than the 
mother is to the child or the lover to the beloved one. 
But, as the joy of the child when it is reunited to the 
beloved mother — as the joy which comes to the soul of 
that woman when she again remembers her lover — 
cannot be described by words, so that happiness which 
comes through the reunion of the soul with God is 
beyond the power of utterance. That happiness is not 
temporary; it is unbounded and everlasting. This 
reunion leads to a still higher realization of the spirit- 
ual oneness with God. At that time the soul regains 
its true nature, breaks through all barriers and walls 
of limitation and attains to p.erfect freedom and om- 
niscience; from that time divine qualities begin to flow 



DIVINE COMMUNION, II 

through the soul. In that state all questions are 
solved, all doubts cease, all results of past actions are 
annulled and all the knots of desire that arise in the 
self-loving and self-seeking ignorant heart are torn 
asunder. After this realization there is no more strug- 
gle for the expiation of sins, no more crying for for- 
giveness, no more fear of punishment. The human 
s®ul is transfigured with Divine Spirit. This transfig- 
uration, or perfect atonement, or at-one-ment with 
God, is the aim of divine communion. 

Divine communion brings the attainment of God- 
consciousness-; all other phases of consciousness which 
are manifested on the lower planes in daily life, merge 
into this supreme consciousness of the divine nature 
of the soul; it is called in Sanskrit, Samhadhi; it is the 
state of God-consciousness ; if any man or woman can 
reach this state for an instant even, then he or she de- 
stroys all effects of the sins which he or she may have 
committed during perhaps hundreds of previous in- 
carnations. 

No individual soul, whether virtuous or sinful, rich 
or poor, can ever become truly sinless and happy with- 
out coming into that state of God-consciousness. You 
may cry for help and pray for forgiveness day after day 
and night after night, may ask redemption from sins, 
but rest assured that he who will forgive sins is your 
own Self. Your own Divine nature alone can make 
you free from sins. You may call that Divine nature, 
God or Buddha or Christ, it is all the same; no one 
other than the Divine Self possesses the power of for- 
giving the sins of the individual ego. Remember that 

LtfC. 



12 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

all help that you have received has not come to you 
from the outside, but it has come from the very bottom 
of your own soul; you might have thought, through 
ignorance, that the forgiveness and help came from 
outside, but the time is sure to come when you will 
have to realize that all the help you have received in 
your life, or will receive in the future, is from within; 
that it is your own Divine Self that will help and for- 
give you, who, through ignorance and self-delusion, 
have committed many mistakes, and have played the 
part of a sinner. 

The highest ideal of divine communion — that is, 
the attainment of God-consciousness — does not come 
through ceremony or ritual, nor by muttering passages 
from the Scriptures, nor by counting beads, nor by 
confessing sins to a priest, nor by worshipping the de- 
parted spirit of any holy man; these may be helpful to 
those whose souls have not awakened to spiritual 
truths, but God-consciousness comes through the real- 
ization of our true nature, which is eternally one with 
the pure, blissful and all-knowing Spirit Divine. 

There are many paths that lead to such realization; 
each of these paths is described in Vedanta as Yoga, 
or the method of attaining this consciousness. Those 
who practise Yoga sincerely, keeping the attainment 
of divine communion and God-consciousness as the 
highest ideal, should not stop until it is acquired. Life 
is not worth living if we cannot become conscious of) 
our Divine nature in this life. What good can be 
gained by living like slaves to passions and desires; 
what shall we gain for our souls by attiring our bodies 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 13 

in rich raiment, or by living in beautiful mansions, or 
by filling high positions in the state or country? 
These may be of great value to those whose aim is not 
higher than the attainment of earthly comforts and 
pleasures of the body. How long will this body stay? 
Not more than five or six scores of years ; but remem- 
ber that the soul life is not confined to the life of the 
body; it is from eternity to eternity. What are you 
going to do for your souls? 

Have you gained anything for the soul? The treas- 
ures of the earth do not enrich the soul and com- 
forts of the body cannot long satisfy that soul which 
is overburdened with cares, anxieties, suffering and 
worries, and which is obeying the commands of hun- 
dreds of masters internal and external. The pleas- 
ures of the senses do not satisfy the soul which has 
realized the transitoriness and the ephemeral character 
of worldly objects. No family ties, no earthly rela- 
tions, can ever quench the thirst of that soul which 
longs to drink the water that comes through divine 
communion alone; no earthly thing can stand in the 
way of that soul which eagerly seeks the path to re- 
turn home and rest there peacefully after the tiresome 
journey along the by-ways in the maze of the phenom- 
enal world. Vain are the hopes of those who try to 
be happy by acquiring wealth, or the pleasures of the 
senses and comforts of the body. Since the beginning 
of the history of humanity no human soul has ever 
become truly happy, or peaceful, or blissful in this life 
by pursuing the pleasures of the senses and comforts 
of the body. Therefore Vedanta says : " If a man be- 



14 VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY. 

comes master of the whole world, still he is not happy; 
he wants something else." And Jesus says: " What 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul?" Neither happiness nor immortality 
can be bought by the almighty dollar. One may be 
the father of many children, but he must be a fool who 
expects to be happy on account of many children. 
True happiness comes to a soul when it renounces the 
foolish idea of becoming happy through sense pleas- 
ures and earthly enjoyments, and seeks God-con- 
sciousness by entering into the gate of divine com- 
munion. He who has entered that gate by the sincere 
and earnest practice of Yoga, and has succeeded in re- 
gaining his true nature, sees Divinity everywhere. To 
his eyes the beauty of a human face, or of a landscape, 
appears infinitely more beautiful because behind that 
beauty he sees the Infinite Source of all beauty; he 
knows that this external beauty is but a partial expres- 
sion of that Divine beauty. He feels Divine presence 
in music, as well as in every sound that enters into his 
ears. Such a soul perceives Divinity in every object 
of the senses. 

Then the mysteries of life and death are solved. 
The whole life, which seems to us meaningless, un- 
folds higher purpose, nobler and more spiritual mean- 
ing to one who has reached God-consciousness 
through Divine communion. He whose soul com- 
munes with the Divine Spirit within does not care for 
any celestial felicity; he does not want anything of this 
world; he is serene, peaceful, restful, happy and always 
contented, free from worry, anxieties, misery, sorrow, 



DIVINE COMMUNION. 1 5 

suffering and fear of death. He knows that he is di- 
vine. If the whole world persecutes him, tortures him 
and cuts his body into pieces, even then he resists not, 
but blesses his persecutors and gently utters : " I am 
Spirit Divine; swords cannot pierce me, fire cannot 
burn me, the pains of the body cannot affect me; I am' 
immortal. I am in the sun, in the moon, in the stars; 
nay, I am the soul of the persecutor's soul. I am He, 
I am He. If the whole world go, I do not lose any- 
thing by it. He says : " I bow down to my Divine 
Spirit, which does not possess anything, yet which is 
the Master of all that exists in the universe, or will 
exist in the future." 



NOV 30 1001 



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